Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Rejected Scientific Paper Recycled as an Ad

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the to-each-according-to-his-ability-to-pay dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "In this article, The Scientist reveals a curious and probably unique story. Two years ago, a researcher at Brown University submitted a paper to a scientific medicine journal. Then he received a note from the editor saying that his paper would not interest the journal readers. Thinking that his article was unfairly rejected before peer review, he decided to publish a two-page ad with the contents of his paper in the same journal. He even asked readers if they thought the contents interesting and received 33 positive replies. Read this summary before telling me what you think and if you've heard about a similar story."

4 of 123 comments (clear)

  1. Years by metalhed77 · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    I've been a member of this website for years and I just want to voice the fact that I'm pissed off at yet another Roland Piquepaille article. And yes, I'm posting this at +2, gotta use that karma for something useful.

    --
    Photos.
    1. Re:Years by QuantumG · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      It's because he's french isn't it? I can understand that.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    2. Re:Years by Spy+Hunter · · Score: 1, Offtopic
      Look,
      • Contrary to that article, many Piquepaille stories are not accepted.
      • All his stories now contain links to primary sources as their first and most prominent links, and his blog only as a secondary link.
      • Some Piquepaille stories are interesting and informative. Though I readily admit that some are inane and shouldn't have been posted.
      • The ads are quite small and unobtrusive. As I type this, one of them is for an algorithmic music composing program, which I think is cool. You don't see ads for algorithmic music composing programs just anywhere.
      • The amount of money Roland makes is immaterial. It's not like it comes out of your pocket. He doesn't run flashing "punch the monkey" ads. Nothing is stopping you from getting a piece of the action by posting your own articles, either. All that matters here is the quality of his posted articles.
      • Finally, and most importantly, what Roland Piquepaille does is nearly identical to what Slashdot does, in every way! Let me describe his process: he looks for articles in mainstream news sources, writes a little summary, cites a paragraph or two, and posts it. That's actually better than Slashdot; here the paragraphs are usually plagarized, and yet somehow misspelled and filled with grammar errors. Slashdot runs ads too, you know. Slashdot is also making money off of your eyeballs by basically copying article text from primary news sources. They don't even do the research themselves, they rely on other people to plagarize the articles for them! Many Slashdot articles are of an even lower quality than Piquepaille's worst.
      I completely fail to understand the animosity that Slashdot readers have toward Roland Piquepaille. Is it because he seems to be French? Or what?
      --
      main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
  2. Don't join stories in which you have no interest. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 1, Offtopic


    Please don't visit and comment on Slashdot discussions in which you have no interest.

    I find that I am interested in only about one-twentieth of the articles on Slashdot. I was interested in this article, and was surprised to see people doing an anger trip over it.

    Three points: 1) Roland does not have much chance of making money from his Slashdot articles. (See quote below.) 2) He puts a lot of work into his articles, which may be the reason they get accepted by Slashdot. 3) By complaining unreasonably, you have made him more famous. I was only vaguely aware of him until now, because of a few complaining comments. I didn't know he had a web site of his own until now.

    Quote from a comment to an article objecting to Roland's articles, which are sometimes posted on Slashdot:

    "I have not seen a SINGLE slashdot article attributed to Roland that requires travelling through his blog.

    "Every single time I have seen his articles, the header always links to his sources. Only at the footer do you have the option to go to his site and see a more thorough writeup.

    "I have never been forced to view Roland's site just to see the article.

    "Compare and contrast with an article posted from the NY Times...."